Commentary on transportation in Connecticut and the Northeast by JIM CAMERON, for 19 years a member of the CT Rail Commuter Council.
Jim is also the founder of a new advocacy effort: www.CommuterActionGroup.org
Disclaimer: his comments are only his own. All contents of this blog are (c) Cameron Communications Inc

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April 27, 2012

Driving
to Hartford the other day (no, you cannot really get there by train) I saw a
beautiful sight:hundreds of
trucks!What surer sign of an economic
recovery?

Yet,
motorists hate trucks and mistakenly blame them for traffic congestion and
accidents that cause hours of delays.

Readers
of this column know I’m a “rail guy” and would love to see freight trains
replace trucks, but that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.But as motorists we should not blame truckers
for traffic woes of our own creation.

Check
the facts and you’ll find most highway accidents are caused by motor cars, not
the trucks drawn into the incidents.

Do
trucks drive too fast?Sure, but don’t
we all?Next time you’re on I-95 check
who’s in the high-speed left lane and you’ll see cars, not trucks.

Should
there be better safety inspections of trucks?Absolutely!But for every
over-weight truck or over-worked truck driver there are doubtless hundreds of
unsafe cars and equally road-weary warriors behind the wheel whose reckless
disregard endangers us all.

Truckers
drive for a living.They are tested and
licensed to far more rigorous standards than anyone else.And because they drive hundreds of miles each
day, overall I think they are far better drivers.When’s the last time you saw a trucker
juggling a cellphone and a latte like many soccer moms?

And
remember… they’re not out there driving their big-rigs up and down the highway
just to annoy us.We put those trucks on
the road by our voracious consumption patterns.Every product we buy at stores large and small, including the very newspaper
you hold in your hand, was delivered by trucks.Want fewer trucks on the road?Just
stop buying stuff.

By
definition, trucks are high-occupancy vehicles.Compare the energy efficiency of a truck delivering its cargo to you in
your “SOV” (single occupancy vehicle), even if it is a hybrid.Only rail offers better fuel efficiency.

Why
are trucks jamming our highways at rush hour?Because selfish merchants require them to drive at those times to meet
their delivery timetable.If big-box
stores and supermarkets only took truck deliveries in the overnight hours, our
highways would flow must better at rush hour.

Truckers
must use the interstates while passenger cars can chose among many alternate
routes.Why is the average distance
driven on I-95 in Connecticut
just eleven miles?Because most of us
drive the ‘pike for local, not interstate trips.

If
we were smart enough to “value price” our highways (ie return tolling) we’d see
fewer vehicles of all kinds on I-95, and those that were willing to pay for the
privilege of motoring there would get real value in a faster ride.

I’m
hardly an apologist for the trucking lobby.But neither is it fair for us to blame anyone but ourselves for highway
safety and congestion.It’s the SOV
crowd, not the truckers, who are to blame.Excessive speed and drinking cause most accidents, and the majority of
accidents involve cars, not trucks.

Let’s
be honest about this mess of our own making and stop trying to blame truckers
as our scapegoat.As the great philosopher
Pogo once put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

April 09, 2012

Governor
Malloy is quick to tell us that creating a state budget is like making sausage,
something he has done in years past (the sausage making).“It’s not pretty. It’s work,” he says in
describing the process.The question is,
how palatable will the end result be, especially for riders of mass transit.

Last
year the Connecticut Department of Transportation said it desperately needed a
fare increase of 16% for riders of Metro-North.That got whittled back to a “modest” 12%,
spread over three years and riders felt victorious.

That’s
like a mugger threatening to take your life but only kicking you in the
groin.For this you’re supposed to be
grateful?

Then
earlier this year we found that the fare increase wasn’t
being spent on the trains but getting tossed into the sieve-like “Special
Transportation Fund” which also pays for bridge repairs and even CDOT pensions.

To
her credit, State Representative Gail
Lavielle (R-Wilton) and 26 other lawmakers tried to pass a bill requiring
fare hikes to be spent on transit.The
bill never got out of the Transportation Committee.

Are
you as confused by the workings of Hartford as I am?Oh, I’m grateful!Just confused.

But
so too are other taxpayers, especially those who don’t ride our trains or
buses.They wonder why tax money is
being spent to subsidize transit at all.(In Westport the Board of Finance is even slashing
subsidies for local bus routes, following on this populist theme.)

I’ve
often noted that fares on Metro-North in Connecticut are the highest fares of
any railroad in the US.That’s because
the subsidy is the lowest.

For
example, a one-way ticket from Bridgeport to NYC (a distance of 55 miles and
running right alongside I-95) costs $16.25.

But
ride the MBTA commuter train from Boston to Providence (51 miles, also
paralleling I-95) and you’ll pay only $7.75.Or avoid the traffic mess on the 10 lane wide I-95 in Miami by riding
there on Tri-Rail from Boynton Beach (58 miles) and you’ll only pay $6.25.Similar distances against the same competing
roadway… so why the fare differences?

Are
the MBTA or Tri-Rail trains any cheaper to operate?No.But
ironically, the lowest fares are where the lowest ridership is found.

Most
commuter railroads keep fares low to attract passengers out of their cars.But in Connecticut, where trains are standing
room only (and driving options are few and undesirable), the commuter gets screwed
with the highest fares, not to mention over-priced parking in limited supply.

Not
everyone riding Metro-North is a “1%’er”.Sure, we have a few millionaires.But we have far more middle-income, blue collar and minority workers and
students.By constantly raising train
and bus fares, we are going to literally drive those people out of our state.They can get to their NYC duties faster and
cheaper from Long Island, Westchester or New Jersey.

Forty
percent of all the taxes paid in this state are paid by residents of Fairfield
County.Lose those commuters and the
entire state loses… especially those we subsidize who live up-state and who never
take mass transit.

So
kudos to those in the legislature who “get it”, who see the value of keeping
our mass transit as affordable as possible.As these budget proposals come to a vote, we will be watching closely
who votes in support of the commuter… and who sees them just as a convenient target
of taxation.

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Former NBC News director and anchor, now a professional communications consultant, JIM CAMERON leads workshops on media training, speech and presentations skills and preps clients for analyst briefings and legislative testimony.
Jim served for 19 years on the CT Metro-North Rail Commuter Council, is an elected member of the Darien Representative Town Meeting (RTM) and is Program Director of Darien TV79, his town's government TV station.